


Lazarus, Again

by wargoddess



Series: Lazarus Effect [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Experimental Style, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Renegade Commander Shepard, Spoilers for Citadel DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:49:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8812093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: Shepard's clone, dead and alive, and then alive again. If only Shepard's leftovers weren't so perfect for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Post ME3 Citadel DLC. Always bugged me that the clone died, dammit. Fanfic to the rescue. Inspired by cypheroftyr's Renegade Shep, tho unrelated.

     It isn't a thing that happens often, but since occasionally members of all species can suffer from depression, class-three mass effect nets have been a standard part of skyscraper construction on the Citadel since the 1860s.

     The clone discovers this when he slams into one, and immediately finds his mass and velocity harmlessly disippated into thermal and light energy, which ripple away through the net. Then it slides him down and to one side, so that he tumbles unharmed onto the nearest open tier. The building is under construction, and much of it (apart from the net) is powered down. There seem to be no construction crews around to find him. The clone lies sprawled there for several minutes. He isn't unconscious. He's fine. He just can't think of a reason to get up.

     Finally the approach of footsteps draws the clone out of despair. He has Shepard's exquisitely-honed fight-or-flight instincts, after all. So he lifts his head, and by the time the footsteps stop, he's on his knees, though a little slouched to one side, and hardly prepared to defend himself. He feels tired, as one should after surviving a battle to the death against Shepard. He feels discarded. He feels elderly in every iota of his six-month-old flesh. He really was hoping to die, and his failure to achieve even this much just seems like the universe's final insult heaped upon him.

     The person who has stopped before him is a salarian, who stares at him. "Commander Shepard?"

     God, how the clone hates that name.

     "No," he replies. But he knows what he looks like, right down to the cracked N7 armor that was indisputably his for all of a few minutes before its rightful owner came back to reclaim it.

     He expects a demand for explanations, but too late he remembers the learning module that Brooks had given him on the salarian species. _Prone to intuitive leaps no other species can follow_ , it had said. This is what that looks like:

     "Oh," says the salarian. "A Cerberus clone, really? And you must've tried to take over Shepard's life. I could've told you that was a bad idea."

     The clone nods. Alas that he wasn't an STG-made clone.

     The salarian regards him for a moment. "No open wounds or gunshot burns... Shepard didn't do this to you. Why did you try to kill yourself?"

     The clone shrugs. "I have nowhere else to go."

     There is a pause.

     "What a coincidence," says Maelon Heplorn. "Neither have I."

#

     It was a joke, when he was with Brooks. Shepard had Miranda Lawson. The clone had Brooks, who turned out to be the inferior of the two, and not nearly so attached to him. Now, Shepard has Mordin Solus, while the clone has Mordin's failed apprentice -- another inferior leftover. Once is a joke. Twice stops being funny.

     Maelon lives in the under-construction tower. It's been under construction for over a year now because Maelon wrote a VI whose sole job it was to throw red tape at the building's owners to keep construction halted. The VI works very well. In the meantime, Maelon squats in the penthouse, which was already fully finished and furnished as a showcase for potential investors. He's stolen funds from two Silversun Strip casinos and used three different forged accounts to install equipment and build a lab under the penthouse. It's all surprisingly shiny and cutting-edge.

     Maelon is a drunk. The clone remembers reading somewhere that alcohol is a banned substance on Sur'kesh -- not just controlled, but a full-on class 1 restricted-substance felony. Why? Partly it's because amphibians absorb water-soluble substances easily and alcohol poisoning is a perpetual danger. Mostly it's just because mad scientists shouldn't drink.

     "Oh, thank various gods, I've been so bored," Maelon says, before reconstructing the clone's entire existence. He gives the clone a new identity -- including new fingerprints, new retinas, and a bit of gene therapy that makes him, technically, no longer a clone. He throws in ocular flashbangs in case the clone ever wants to try espionage, even though the clone says he doesn't want to. The physical reconstruction is painful. The flashbangs go in without a hitch, but Maelon forgets to include a nerve blocker when he prepares the injection. This inflicts twenty-four hours of sweating and groaning and shuddering spasms and fever on the clone. (Salarians really, _really_ should not drink.)

     But birth is never painless. The clone remembers that from the last time, only a few months before.

     Before the injection, Maelon let the clone select a new face. The clone picked opposites of everything Shepard has except the mouth. (In spite of himself, he likes Shepard's mouth. Damn it.) Shepard is white, so the clone has chosen to become a lovely, dark-skinned shade of black. Shepard has blue eyes; the clone has asked for the darkest brown possible. Shepard is all forehead and jaw, so the clone chose a widow's peak and prominent cheekbones. He asked for a nice wide nose, despite Maelon's drunken attempt to persuade him to "try olfactory slits, come on, just once." (Not ever. Not even one drink.)

     When the clone looks at himself in the mirror afterward, the man who looks back at him has a long, thoughtful face, instead of a broad and forceful one. Apart from the lips, it is the face of a stranger.

     And something inside the clone... loosens, at this evidence that he might actually choose his own fate.

#

     Choosing one's fate is harder than it seems.

     For a while the clone can't figure out where to begin. He has no asset but himself -- though he is still a physically fit, fully-trained, military-grade biotic and Vanguard. That's worth something. He needs income of his own, too, since Maelon's spending sprees -- he's a generous, shortsighted drunk -- frequently mean that they have new equipment in the lab but no food in the stasis fridge. Most of the Citadel isn't hiring, though; war is hell on the economy. And the clone's new-made background, though thorough enough for basic scrutiny, won't survive a real security check, so that rules out C-SEC. That leaves only crime, and being a bouncer.

     The clone chooses bouncing. Crime he's done, after all, and it didn't go well. Compared to organizing interstellar capers with a group of inept mercenaries, standing in a noisy club isn't all that challenging, but it is remarkably soothing. No one expects anything of him. No one's trying to use him. It gives him time to think about his future.

     He recognizes Kaidan Alenko when the man passes him, of course. It's been a couple of months, but though that is fully a quarter of the clone's life, it really isn't that much time at all. Last he saw Alenko, he thinks he was trading bullets with the man, back during that whole business in the Archives -- but no. That was then. Someone else shot at Alenko. That's not who the clone chooses to be now. The past is the past.

     Alenko stops, though, and eyes him for a moment. The clone's stomach clenches in anxiety, although he manages to keep his face bored and still. Alenko steps closer, thoughtful. "Yeah?" the clone snaps in defensive aggression -- before remembering that he shouldn't talk. Maelon also forgot to change his vocal register, along with leaving out the painkillers.

     Alenko blinks, maybe at the familiarity of the voice, but he says, "Sorry. Uh." He looks away and rubs the back of his head. So awkward. The clone remembers making fun of Alenko's awkwardness with Brooks, when they watched vids of the second human SPECTRE and found him wanting. Alenko shrugs. "It's just that... Okay, this is going to sound like a pickup line, but you have a very familiar mouth."

     It does sound like a pickup line. The clone has been trained to use people. That line was one of the many Brooks taught him: _You have a familiar [insert body part target likes best]. What's your name?_

     Except the clone knows Alenko's name. Kaidan. Second human Spectre, one of the first human military biotics, a member of Shepard's first crew and -- once -- Shepard's friend. Except friends don't usually notice each others' mouths. More than friend, maybe?

     "They say everybody's got a twin out there, somewhere," the clone says, as he was trained to do. He smiles Shepard's smile, but this is only because he's had little practice developing his own.

     Alenko blinks again at this smile, then chuckles ruefully. "Well, the mouth I remember hardly ever smiles. But, uh, it looks nice on you."

     Jesus, Alenko is actually blushing.

     Jesus, the clone is, too.

     Whoa. Brooks didn't train him to do that. What's happening? Why does he want to -- What should he do?

     Say something.

     "I, uh, I get off at ten," the clone surprises himself by saying. It's softer than it should be. This is new territory.

     Alenko's slow smile, though, shows that he's doing at least one thing right.

#

     It's just talk, at first. Alenko isn't the quick decision type. The clone doesn't know if he himself is or not, so he follows Alenko's lead.

     They walk along the promenade outside Purgatory. After the expected small talk and flirting -- Alenko is charmed rather than repelled by the clone's clumsy technique, to the clone's relief -- Alenko explains that he's had himself permanently assigned to the Citadel, as have a handful of other SPECTREs in the wake of the Cerberus attack. "Given that the human Councilor was involved in the coup attempt, I thought it was best if at least one human SPECTRE..." Alenko begins, and then trails off. He laughs again, without humor, at himself. "Ah, who am I kidding. I'd be on the _Normandy_ right now if..." He trails off again, smile gone.

     The clone's stomach clenches again, this time in sympathy. Brooks showed him footage of the end of the Cerberus affair, when Alenko and Shepard had a tense showdown that culminated in Shepard shooting Alenko's boss -- and nearly Alenko himself. Friendship doesn't usually survive something like that.

     _I'm not Shepard_ , the clone thinks, and for the first time in his short life this thought is hopeful. _Maybe with me, he..._

     He chokes this thought off as if it has insulted him.

     "Maybe this is where you're supposed to be," he says instead, just to say something. "Maybe that's what it means, that you're not on the _Normandy_. Maybe this is fate."

     Alenko eyes him for a moment, amused. " _That_ sounds like a pickup line."

     The clone looks away, flustered. He hadn't meant it that way. "Sorry."

     "Don't be. I liked it." Alenko takes his hand. That makes the clone's thoughts stutter. "I can't stop feeling like I know you."

     The past is the past, except when it stupidly kept the lips and voice it should've given up. " _I_ don't even know me," the clone confesses. The name he gave Alenko was false, of course, but suddenly he wishes he had a real name to give. He wishes... Alenko's hand is very warm in his own. It prompts him to honesty. "But I... I think I want to know you."

     Brooks showed him how to seduce. He watched her do it to a dozen people while they were together. She tried it a few times on him, and he imitated Shepard's responses as he thought he was supposed to, and she'd been mildly offended that he'd replied to her act with an act of his own.

     This, however, is not seduction. He wants Alenko. For real. The hunger of it is surprising and strong and strange. He doesn't know what to do with it, but Alenko's hand tugs just a little, and that's good. The clone has spent his life following the cues of others. So now he lifts a hand and lets his fingers dance along Alenko's jaw, marveling at the texture of the other's skin. (He has never heard the words "touch starvation" before, but it is a thing that can kill a child, and the clone is after all not even a year old.) Alenko's eyes are so sharp and searching that the clone freezes for a moment, caught in them. In that moment, he is almost certain that Alenko knows who he really is.

     But the clone has no idea who he is, himself. And if Alenko knows, and isn't angry, isn't afraid... then maybe the clone is someone good. He... he wants that, all of a sudden. To be good. For Alenko.

     It's such a light kiss. The clone isn't sure how to deepen it without being clumsy. Alenko exhales through his nose, though, and the sigh tells the clone that this lightness is what Alenko really wanted... for now. Alenko's lips are surprisingly warm and soft, and the smell of him up close is cologne and biotic ozone, and before the clone realizes it, several seconds have passed -- an enormous fraction of his life, relatively speaking. All lost to this man's mouth.

     They part. The clone aches with the parting, feeling hollowed-out and wrong. Alenko's frowning. It bothers the clone until he realizes Alenko's feeling that odd, desperate ache too. Alenko shakes his head. "What the hell? I don't know anything about you. I don't..." He steps back, troubled, visibly torn. "I don't..."

     The clone wants to snap at him: _You don't need to know anything about me!_ That's what he was trained to do -- emulate Shepard, who is not a nice man. But his every instinct cries that this is the wrong approach to take with Alenko. That way ends with them aiming guns at each other, and maybe not missing the next time.

     And. Oh, God. Alenko is a SPECTRE. He's more than good enough, the clone knows, to investigate that frustrating sense of familiarity into a positive identification. The clone should never have spoken to him, never have --

     The clone cuts that line of thought off ruthlessly; what's done is done. What matters now is how he deals with it. Brooks would want him to try and kill Alenko, but his heart rejects this solution before his mind can formulate it clearly. He then thinks: _I can confess._ What will happen then? Probably Alenko will kill him. The clone wanted to die anyway, didn't he? He let go of the _Normandy_ 's ramp before Shepard could break his fingers to force the issue. He is a leftover, a spare, an unwanted by-product, and --

     His churning thoughts crystallize. He can see only two outcomes. The first is that Alenko will find out what he is, and kill him. The second is that Alenko, whose integrity and by-the-bookness the dossier stressed, will turn the clone in when he finds out. That way lies more using. How many agencies would like to get their hands on a clone of the great Commander Shepard? Some of them will want Alenko out of the way, to preserve the secret.

     So neither option ends well. And neither holds any possibility of Alenko wanting him back.

     The clone turns and walks away. He hears Alenko make a startled, abortive sound behind him, but that's all.

#

     He brings home liquor that both he and Maelon can drink. It's not a good thing to do with an alcoholic, but the clone is not a good man, is he?

     Is he?

     He drinks most of the liquor before Maelon can, anyway. And as he swims in and out of lucidity, because he might have Shepard's genes but not Shepard's years of built-up tolerance, Maelon looks blearily up at him. "It doesn't get any better, you know," he says.

     The clone flinches. Has Maelon made another of his infuriating salarian intuitive leaps? Does he know that the clone has stupidly, instantly fallen in love with one of the people he tried to kill -- someone who _will_ figure out who he is -- and broken his own damned heart in the process? But Maelon hiccups, grimaces in a way that the clone knows means vomiting later, and then puts his head down on the kitchen table. "I'm just saying," Maelon continues. "I _know_. You try to do what you think is right, and it goes wrong. And then you try to fix it and that's worse. And you just keep _paying_ for all of it. Forever." He lifts a three-fingered hand to make what looks to the clone like an obscene gesture. "Even though... you just wanted to do something good. Some of us are stuck... being what the universe made us."

     Maelon drifts off, hand falling back onto the table. The clone gets up, and tilts Maelon's head so that he won't choke if he throws up in his sleep, and pushes a wastebin close for the inevitable. It's hard to walk steadily, but he goes to fetch a blanket, and drapes this over Maelon's shoulders. His hand lingers. Maelon is his only friend, if Maelon can even be considered such.

     But. The clone leaves Maelon's tower, and never goes back.

#

     It'll have to be crime, he decides.

     No one can stay on the Citadel if they're not employed or a property owner; that's the new wartime rule. Unless he wants to become a squatter down on the docks, he's got to find something. The Blue Suns are hiring, he's heard. He doesn't like them. They remind him of those CAT-6 fools. Still, he can take a short-term contract, maybe just freelance, since all he'll need is enough money to hire an information broker to make him a new identity. Maybe if the identity's good enough, he can join C-SEC -- or even the Alliance. He doesn't want to follow in Shepard's footsteps, but he does kind of want to fight the Reapers. Maybe that's in his blood.

     He has enough money to buy a few nights in a capsule hotel and some nutrient paste. After he squeezes out dinner, he puts on a hotel robe so he can have his only set of clothes cleaned, then he curls up inside a three-meter-long by one-meter-diameter tube with a full belly and an empty heart. The bed's quite comfortable, and the capsule has holovid and nerve-stim tech that could make him feel like he's lying in a meadow, looking up at a blue sky... but the clone feels that he has lived enough illusions. He'll take the claustrophobia.

     He can opaque the door of the capsule, at least, and does so. He can lie in his bed sleeplessly and does so. He can think, for maybe the thousandth time since, newborn, he made the mistake of suggesting to Brooks, _Maybe Shepard would help me_. She laughed at the idea and then taught him to laugh at it, too. And now he has insulted Shepard and attacked him and tried to steal his life. Shepard doesn't have the kind of kindness in him that could forgive something like that. The only member of Shepard's team who does have that capacity for kindness is Alenko.

     Alenko. The clone has mostly managed not to think of him in the day or so since that kiss. Now, though, he remembers the smoothness of Alenko's lips. Does he never chap? They were smooth and so soft, the clone pressed against them and thought of biting but could not bring himself to, mostly because he had been just lost in the wonder of softness.

     The clone shifts, restlessly shrugging off the robe when it's too hot for the space. Soft lips in his mind and he is very hard down below. He turns onto his side and tries to will the lust away. He doesn't like jerking off. Hasn't figured out how to do it right, mostly just ends up sore and frustrated. Puberty is a useful and necessary time for figuring certain things out in a human being's life, and the clone knows he is badly hampered by the lack of it. But his thoughts return to Alenko's lips and... and he bites his own dryer ones. Had Alenko wondered at the dryness? Maybe wished the clone would find some lip balm somewhere? Or, and this is a horrible thought, what if Alenko felt something familiar in those lips?

     His dick is so damned hard. With an annoyed sigh, the clone turns over onto his belly in hopes of smothering it back to quiescence.

     What if Alenko knew this dick, too? That tension between him and Shepard... The clone hasn't changed his body much, just his face and skin. God, he's been so stupid. Nothing could have ever happened between them because he is stupid. If Alenko had seen him naked and recognized --

     The thought sends a shudder through him. His breath quickens and his hand creeps downward.

     If Alenko had touched him elsewhere --

     The clone turns his face into the pillow. His hips move, and the hand is under him now. Alenko's hand. Alenko would be slow, wouldn't he? Gentle. Thorough, exploring every ridge. He would tug back the foreskin. Brush the exposed tip ever-so-gently with his lips.

     The clone rolls his hips a little and is rewarded by a surge of pleasure so intense that for a moment he is breathless. If Alenko had wanted him -- Oh! The clone inhales, awed and aching all over again. But Alenko _had_ wanted him. And if the clone had not been _the clone_ , if he'd been just an ordinary man who caught a lonely SPECTRE's eye and they had walked and kissed and talked some more, maybe that is dating, he's seen that on vids, maybe if they did some _dating_ and then Alenko invited him home and they fell into bed like on the vids and then Alenko would be hard and smooth and heavy _all over him_ , not just touching the clone's cock or his lips but everywhere, skin on skin and breath on breath, and what if the clone could have touched Alenko _back_ and made _him_ feel like this, and what if then Alenko had smiled at him and said --

     The clone snarls and has to wrench himself out of his first ever sexual fantasy. He's shaking, breathing too hard, his balls have drawn up tight and he's read somewhere that this is what happens right before an orgasm. He is afraid of orgasm. It sounds like everything he hates, a total loss of control, an ugliness of _mess_ and convulsions and you know, there are just way too many comparisons of orgasm to death in literature. He should look up the statistics on how often people die in bed. Surely pleasure cannot be worth such risk.

     (The clone wonders when his paltry life began to be worth so much to him. Then he crushes that thought, angrily, and tells himself to stop whining.)

     Had no business wanting Alenko anyway, the clone thinks bitterly, as the dull, awful ache of unsatisfied need finally begins to subside. Alenko is Shepard's leftovers again. Shouldn't the clone be done with wanting those?

     If only Shepard's leftovers weren't so perfect for him.

     Still seething at his own weakness, the clone drifts off to sleep.

#

     The clone wakes when a soft ping inside the tube warns that checkout time is in an hour. Blearily he pulls himself together and drags himself out to go take a shower and make himself presentable so maybe the Blue Suns will use him for cannon fodder. As he tosses the towel over his shoulder and hops down off the ladder and turns, his body (Shepard's body) reacts before his mind can quite process what it's seeing, and he jerks into a defensive posture at the sight of Kaidan Alenko sitting there, in a folding chair, right in front of his tube.

     The SPECTRE is calm, posture deceptively relaxed, legs crossed and one arm thrown over the back of the chair. His expression is so neutral that, on a naturally-friendly man like Alenko, it might as well be hostile. "I'm trying to wrap my head around this," he says to the clone. "Help me, here."

     Alenko's right hand is in his lap, but very close to his heavy pistol. And Alenko doesn't really need a heavy pistol to reave the clone into his component atoms, given that the clone has no armor and no shield and no amp on him at the moment. The clone takes a deep breath, then straightens from his combat crouch. It's all over anyway.

     "I can't help you," he says. He looks away. "I told you, I don't know who I -- I don't even know why I'm still alive. I wish I hadn't -- I'm sorry. For what I did." It's incoherent, but he's glad he got that much out. Then he shrugs. "I won't fight you, if you're here to... whatever."

     "Was it a plan? Some scheme to get close to me, use me?" Alenko's face is still the same, but the timbre of his voice has dropped. It's low and tight with suppressed emotion. This was another behavioral quirk that Brooks noted in the dossier; Alenko starts growling when he's thinking killing thoughts. "Some scheme to get at Shepard again -- "

     "What? No." The clone glares at him, stung. "Jesus, how is _a bouncer_ any threat to him? I'm not interested in being him anymore. Why do you think I changed myself? I was just trying to get by. I didn't know I would meet you, either, or -- " He cuts himself off, but his face is hot. Soft, soft lips, moving against his own. His eyes go to Alenko's lips again and then he has to jerk his gaze away. "I shouldn't have met you. I wish I hadn't."

     Alenko watches his every move. "Why not?"

     The clone spreads his hands, helplessly. "What, _this_ isn't enough?"

     He means the circumstances: himself, annoyingly still alive. Nearly penniless and friendless and forced into mercenary work. Alenko, a SPECTRE, devoting all his formidable talents to tracking down a nobody. This confrontation, which is taking place in the middle of the hotel lobby while the other guests walk past them and surreptitiously stare. The clone is still wearing nothing but a hotel robe.

     But Alenko gets up. Comes at him, such intent in his face that the clone backs up a step, then feels shame that he has done so. Alenko stops right in front of him, though, careful neutrality in place. "And what is 'this?'" he asks the clone.

     That's when the clone realizes this isn't about him being _the clone_. It's about him being the man who kissed Alenko and walked away.

     It's about -- oh, God, oh, please -- Alenko _not liking_ that he walked away.

     Into this stunned silence, Alenko speaks, his voice low and threatening but also somehow demanding. "I meet Shepard's clone. Who tried to kill me. I don't know why, but I'm intrigued. Attracted to him." A muscle flexes in Alenko's jaw. The clone stares at that jaw and thinks of pressing his lips to it and then he wonders what the hell is wrong with him. "I _kiss_ him. I want more."

     The clone catches his breath. He can't help it. Alenko's eyes, sharp as scalpels, narrow.

     "Then he walks away, after dropping every hint short of saying _I am Shepard's clone, who tried to kill you,_ " Alenko concludes. "He doesn't have to drop hints, though. He walks like Shepard. _Smells_ like Shepard. He's tried to make himself different, sure, but the familiarity is what attracted me, even before I realized what I was picking up on."

     "Oh, fuck," the clone breathes, horrified. He should have thought of the walk, and the smell, and the voice, and...

     Alenko's mouth quirks in a non-quite smile. "That's what makes me go to the SPECTRE office to have my lips scanned for DNA, that very night. The variance is standard for gene therapy modification -- enough to keep you from pinging on most security systems. But beyond that, you're him. You're the clone. So now I have to speculate: Is it some kind of game? Were you _counting on_ the familiarity to hook me?"

     "No," the clone blurts. It's a whisper. Alenko ignores him anyway.

     "But I check you out. I do the most thorough background check imaginable, within the law and a little outside it. I call in favors from the _Shadow Broker_. I know more about you than you probably do."

     He steps closer, and this time the clone stands his ground. He doesn't know why. He just... needs to see this through. Alenko keeps coming, though, until the front of his fatigues brush against the clone's robe. They're practically nose to nose, and now people are definitely staring -- but the clone doesn't dare look away. His heart is racing.

     "Maybe it is some sort of game," Alenko says. "Or maybe it's what it looks like: A man trying to start over fresh, even though his own genes trail him like a ball and chain. A man who just happened to meet someone familiar. Just happened to hit it off. A man who was just as... attracted, to that someone."

     He ends this with a little lift of an eyebrow, making it a question. The clone swallows and makes himself say, "Yeah."

     Something shifts minutely in Alenko's face. Tension moving from one place to another beneath his skin. The clone has no idea what it means.

     "A man who realizes there's no way he can hide what he is from me," Alenko concludes, "and so he runs. He gets drunk, says goodbye to Maelon Heplorn, quits his job at Purgatory without two weeks' notice. Comes here. Tries to think of what to do next." Another eyebrow lift.

     The clone has to swallow and hates it. He hates, too, that Alenko knows of his drinking binge, and all the sordid details of his life. He's got so little life to make sordid. He sets his jaw and tries for belligerence, to cover his shame. "I was thinking of the Blue Suns. Better than my old mercenary outfit."

     Alenko shakes his head a little. "You'd be wasted there."

     The clone doesn't reply. It's true, but he's got nowhere else to go. And he doesn't want to think about job prospects when he's here, and Alenko's here, and there's only a bare few inches of robe between them.

     Alenko seems to consider for a while. Then he steps back. The clone bites back a protest. "Come with me," he says, finally. Then he looks amused, as his eyes rove up and down the clone. The clone shivers. "After you get dressed," he adds.

#

     Alenko uses SPECTRE authority to get the clone a job working for C-SEC. "I like to keep my friends and enemies close," he says to Chief Bailey, when Bailey asks whether Alenko's sure about putting his neck out for a man who didn't exist before eight months ago. Then Alenko eyes the clone, and his gaze is hard. "Time will tell which one he is." He walks away before the clone can thank him.

     Bailey believes in trial by fire, so after a crash course in police protocol -- the clone's a fast learner, fortunately -- he's in uniform and on the job in days. He takes to it like a duck to water. But it's easy, chasing down criminals, intimidating suspects, cooling off angry refugees, compared to masterminding the conquest of the great Commander Shepard's life. Or surviving that attempt's failure.

     The other C-SEC agents warm up to him quickly. Bailey likes that the clone is properly ruthless -- but then, he learned how to be an asshole from Shepard himself. It's being decent that's hard. The money's good, too, so with his first paycheck, the clone moves out of the capsule hotel and into a small apartment. The furnishings are basic, but they're his. The toothbrush in the bathroom is his. He's eating out of washed takeout containers -- actual food now and not just paste, moving on up -- but those are fucking his, too. He has belongings. There's a name on the lease and maybe it's not really his, but it's close enough for government work. He finally knows what that saying means.

     A week after he moves into the apartment, six weeks after he started the job, he gets an extranet message. _Purgatory promenade, 8 pm,_ it reads. There's no signature.

     The clone is there at 7:30. He has to keep stopping himself from pacing. When Alenko strolls up, the clone just stands there watching him, hot-faced and entranced and desperately afraid that somehow the other man will know he's had to fight the urge to jerk off to memories of Alenko's mouth every night.

     _Don't think about things like that, he'll know,_ the clone snarls at himself.

     "Bailey says you're working out well," Alenko says, when he's moved over to the railing to watch clubgoers on the platform below. The clone has imitated him. He doesn't want to look at clubgoers, but he'll do what's necessary to get Alenko to stay a bit longer. He is hyperaware of Alenko's shoulder brushing against his. "He's even thinking about promoting you already."

     "Yeah," says the clone. "It's, uh, nice."

     Alenko eyes him, amused. "C-SEC. Nice."

     "Yeah. Good work -- easy. Good pay." The clone shrugs. "Thank you."

     "I can't believe you think it's easy."

     The clone sighs. "I've been alive less than a year. In that time I've learned how to be human, learned how to be somebody else, failed at that, and then learned how to be somebody else again."

     "Huh. Point." Alenko sighs. The clone is hyperaware of the sound of his breath. "I, uh, needed some time," he says finally, after a long pent silence. "To see you for who you are."

     The clone bites back his automatic, _And who is that?_ He says instead, "I'm definitely not _him_."

     Alenko chuckles, but it's brief. "That's for sure. He would hate being a cop. Anyway. It wasn't fair to you, that I..." He sighs. Looks at his hands. "Shepard and I, we -- "

     "I don't want to know," the clone says. It's too sharp. Alenko looks at him in surprise. "I really fucking don't. I don't want anything of his, not anymore. I especially don't want to know if 'his' includes you -- "

     "It doesn't," Alenko says, and something unknots in the clone. Alenko seems troubled, however. "But I can't pretend I didn't want -- " He shakes his head. "Well. It's done. I just have... regrets."

     The dossier had been pretty clear on the fact that Shepard gave up on Alenko after Horizon, and was now working on the _Normandy's_ shuttle pilot. "He's stupid and I hate him," the clone says. "You were right about me being just a cheap imitation, I know that now, but if he picked someone else over you, he's _stupid_ , and whatever else I am, I refuse to be that."

     Alenko chuckles. It's real and relieved and the clone's heart aches. He hates that he knows what _heartache_ means, now. "I don't think you're that."

     "Good." The clone turns to face him. He's sweating and hopes Alenko doesn't see. "Shepard is impulsive and amoral. The dossiers said that was why you and he didn't work out. I've been trying not to be either of those things, for you. That's why I didn't bother you, these last few weeks. I wanted you to take whatever time you needed to think about me and study me and do whatever else you needed to do." Alenko's staring now. The clone swallows and takes a deep breath. "But I need you to be impulsive for a minute. Right now. I -- I need you to tell me if I have a chance, here. Because I -- " Brooks taught him never to show weakness but Brooks was wrong, Brooks abandoned him, and he's tired of obeying her lessons. "I can't sleep," he admits. "I eat and it churns in my stomach. At night, I can't stop _thinking_ about you, and -- "

     Alenko steps foward and the clone reacts badly, because Alenko's movement is a little too much like a hand-to-hand move Brooks taught him, step in and then gut the target with an omni-blade, so the clone tenses and shifts his weight to prepare to dodge a thrust, and then Alenko's mouth lands on his.

     The clone stops. Everything stops.

     It's so hot, Alenko's mouth. So soft.

     So wet inside. He tastes like mint. That's his tongue? It's like a caress, but inside.

     So soft.

     So good.

     When Alenko finally pulls out of him, the clone tries to speak, and fails utterly.

     Alenko regards him for a long, intent moment. Then he says, "Come on."

     The clone swallows. Tries to think. "Where?"

     Alenko half-smiles. "You said you wanted impulsive." He turns to go.

     The clone follows, helpless and bereft.

     Alenko's got a hotel room on the Presidium level. The clone's never been up here before. He barely notices the parks and pretty buildings now. In the rapid transit vehicle, they were on each other the whole way, breathing each other's sighs and biting each other's lips. The clone's shirt is loose as Alenko pulls him out of the vehicle and across the corridor and into the room and then the clone's shirt is off entirely. He fumbles for Alenko's shirt and it moves like magic to obey his will and then there is smooth tawny skin beneath the clone's fingers and he thinks this is better than every dream he's ever had.

     Alenko pulls him again and the clone follows and then there is a bed beneath them. Have they fallen into it, like in the vids? Doesn't matter. Alenko's on top of him, tongue methodically delving into the clone's mouth again and again, hands roaming his body until the clone overflows with something he hadn't noticed was empty, until his whole body feels like just one big vibrating nerve. When Alenko works one strong thigh between his, the clone actually tries to keep his legs closed. (He fails. He needs.) His cock is so _very_ hard, so _damned_ hard, and when Alenko's fingers brush it he has to utter a harsh sound through his nose to get Alenko out of his mouth so he can speak. Even then it's not so much words as verbalized struggling. He knows he's doomed. He knows this thing has an endgame, he just... doesn't want it to end.

     "N-no," he moans. Alenko's rubbing against him, hard on hard, sweet on sweet. His hips buck up and he rubs back, feverishly, even as he tries to talk himself out of it. "Please."

     Alenko's on his neck. He talks into the clone's skin between bites. "No, or please?"

     The clone grips Alenko's shoulders. He hates words. " _Please_." Don't stop. But, oh, God, he can feel it building. Doesn't know how he's going to keep it at bay this time, not with Alenko here, so much better than the fantasy. His throat hurts from holding in moans. His balls hurt and feel too tight. Is that normal? Is that supposed to happen? Is it because he's a clone? Maybe he was put together wrong. "Please, I -- " The clone is shaking. He confesses his sin. "I'm afraid."

     Alenko lifts his head. The room is dim but for a partially unshaded window behind them, through which the neon lights of a Presidium night play over his face. The clone trembles, feeling fragile. If Alenko laughs at his fear --

     "It's okay," Alenko says. He bends, nuzzles under the clone's chin, kisses his too-vulnerable throat. "I'm gonna take care of you."

     The clone has to groan. It feels too good. "I can't," he blurts. "It won't. Too much." Has to swallow. His voice breaks. "I need, please, I just need -- "

     He means _I just need to get control of this_ , or something like that. Alenko lets him get that out and then takes over his mouth again. "Yeah, I know what you need," he says into the clone's mouth, and his hand closes 'round the clone's cock, firm and sure. The clone has an instant to think, _Oh God_ , and then the orgasm utterly savages him. There's none of the poetic stuff he's read; it's all grossly physical. It's hard throbbing and constricted breath and contracted muscles and unbearably intense surges of -- _something_ \-- and tingling in his limbs that splays his toes and fuck, _fuck_ , his nipples --

     Alenko purrs into his gasping mouth, seeming to swallow all of the clone's choked cries. "Yeah," he breathes. His grin shines in the dark. "Oh, yeah. Look at you."

     -- his nipples fuck he's bucking trying to cry out can't get breath _why do his fucking nipples throb_ and his head --

     Steady pumping of Alenko's hand, somehow dragging the pleasure out even longer, though it already feels like it will never end. Lips on the clone's ear. A soft voice: "Yeah. Come on. Give it up. Give me everything."

     -- his head pounds and he's sobbing, oh God please don't let Alenko think he's weak for it but the whole world is coming apart and he is --

     -- _no one_ \--

     "Mine," Alenko whispers. "Yeah. That's what you are. You're all mine."

     The clone dies, and is reborn as Alenko's.

     And as he lies twitching, dead but somehow still alive, Alenko hums against his mouth. "Mmm. That was a nice start. Ready for the rest?"

     All the books compare this to death. They're wrong; the clone has tried death, and found it wanting. This is different. Harder. Better. It's life.

     He wraps arms around Alenko, _Kaidan_ , and says, "I have nowhere else to go."

     "What a coincidence," Kaidan says, with a slow, perfect smile. "Neither have I."

**Author's Note:**

> And yes, now he looks like my personal version of mShep (black, Paragade).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Heavy Bag's Life is on the Line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9622442) by [wargoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess)




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